The invention relates to woodworking apparatus and methods for making dovetails.
The dovetail joint is one of the most decorative and mechanically advantageous joints used in furniture making. By far, its most common and recognizable function has been in joining the corners of wooden boxes for either case or drawer construction. Two types of dovetails are generally employed for this purpose: through and half-blind or lap dovetails. The through dovetail is most often associated with casework construction, like that seen in a traditional blanket chest. The half-blind dovetail is thought of as a drawer joint. However, half-blind dovetails are also very important in the construction of cases when used as a substitute for through dovetails. Detailed descriptions of both of these joints are included in the preferred embodiment of the invention.
Hand cut through and half-blind dovetails are very time consuming and expensive to produce, but because of their widespread desirability and association with high quality furniture construction, many machines and hand held router jigs have evolved which attempt to duplicate their look with some degree of production efficiency. Presently, there is no machine specifically designed to cut a through dovetail like that described in this disclosure, although many purport to do so. The machines that do exist cut half-blind dovetails and are used for mass producing drawers. It is important to note that because of the method of operation of these machines, the resulting dovetail configurations have pins and tails of identical widths.
These machines offer no capability to vary the size and centerline spacing of pins and tails within the same dovetail configuration. There are hand held router jigs that will produce both through and half-blind dovetails as describe herein; however, these are strictly manual methods and cannot be considered machines, nor can they be used efficiently in a production environment.
The major drawback of all of these existing systems is that they limit the woodworker/operator to dovetail configurations determined by a template/templates or a fixed spindle arrangement.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a bench top system whereby through and half-blind dovetail configurations can be designed and efficiently produced in boards suitable for case and drawer construction without the use of guide templates or fixed spindle arrangements. Consequently, the present invention offers the operator the flexibility to cut the pin/tail configurations dictated by his furniture designs rather than requiring him to adjust his designs to fit the templates or spindle arrangements available.